help! google apps, luddites, and other stuff

Just to reiterate my situation.  I have the certs for SBS2003 etc. but I have never been an in the trenches guy (the quals were a req for a govt contract some years ago).  So I have been working with this NGO for the last year and doing the best I can with their limited resources.  The problem I am having now is the new director has arrived and knows even less than I do.  She has concocted a cockamamy plan to migrate all of the mail and webiste functions off-site to google apps.  I have made my case to the top execs, but they are star struck by short term and limited savings.  I have 2 question:

1) Any pros and cons would be appreciated on this one. (so far I have only come up with cons, but I want to shore up my argument)

2)i havent the faintest idea how to re-direct dns from exchange server to an external mail server(i.e. one provided by the host)

Thanks for you input.

What, in particular, do you see wrong with the plan to go with Google Apps? Why do you feel it does not make sense for the organization?

One major concern I have with products like Google Apps is the HIPPA question mark. If HIPPA applies to your org then I am afraid you have a lot of homework to do in order to determine if the Google Apps solution meets security requirements.

I have a couple of issues with google apps.

1) The office currently has a functioning sbs2003 network, with website hosted offsite and email negotiated by exchange server.

2)I am not crazy about the work involved with all of the redirection and consolidation of website and mailserver

This organization is not bound by HIPPA reg.

Thanks!

Neither one of those responses is likely to convince management that it is not a good idea. And for many organizations, it IS a good idea.

The fact that you have an existing sbs instance does not prevent or hinder a possible move to Google Apps. If anything, it allows the transition to Google Apps to be more methodical and better tested before going "live". These are good things.

Not crazy about the work involved? There are plenty of people collecting unemployment that would jump at the chance. Just because there is work involved does not mean that the idea is a bad one.

I can't make the decision as to whether it makes sense for your organization. What I can do is give you unbiased opinion as to whether your arguments make sense. And, unfortunately, based on the dearth of information in this thread, your arguments are not very strong. Of course, having heard nothing from your management, I can't really comment on their side of things!

I posed a potential problem with the HIPAA situation, but since that does not apply I am not sure what else would be a red flag stating this is not a good idea.

Hi there,

I recently went through a similar decision process.  We played with the idea of moving a 50 employee organization to Google Apps instead of paying to outsource an Exchange Server.  Eventually the Exchange Server won out, despite the 500+ a month pricetag.

For us, I broke it down to the following categories:  Email and collaboration platform, management/administration, cost, user preference.

(Website hosting just wasn't a consideration for us.  Things might have changed since I last looked into it, but for us the google offering just was not robust enough and lacked a lot of the features common with other hosts.)

Email and Collaboration:  Exchange got the nod here due to collaboration.  In terms of features that my users actually need, the email is very comparable between the two - I'd say identical.  And they have similar basic collaboration features in terms of shared calendars, folders, contacts, etc.  But to take advantage of the google collaboration feature set it would require a shift in how people currently work - which would mean some training and support.  Whereas Exchange seamlessly integrated with the Outlook client everyone was already using.

Management and Administration:  Exchange won hands down on this one for me.  There were several key back end type management features I could not live without.  And at the time google did not provide them.  Having said that, since we made our decision Google has added some nice management features, possibly even addressing the issues I had with them.  But without digging back into it I can't say one way or another.  This will be different based on your needs, but I would not overlook this aspect of the decision.

Cost:  Free vs Very Expensive?  No contest.  And I am not afraid to say that despite my conclusions above, I was still ready to seriously consider Google Apps as my solution based simply on the cost savings.  We are paying close to $600 a month for our exchange server.  That is $7200 a year.  Over 2 years google apps coulda paid for my company car!  (ok, I don't get a company car, but you get what I am saying).  It is possible to find cheaper exchange options, and MUCH cheaper POP3 type options... but I did run a cost analysis of what it would cost us to manage a system in house, and it was comparable to what this hosted solution runs once we factored in backups and blackberry enterprise server, etc.

User Preference:  In the end, this tipped the scales.  I had a group of my users try google apps - both the web based part of it, and an Outlook integration work around - and they preferred Outlook and OWA.  There was a bit of change phobia at play, but there were also some legitimate concerns.  For example, users by and large really didn't like the labels system.  Some of the more senior staff (and yes that also means in age, which was an interesting factor in who felt comfortable with google and who didnt) considered Google to be too much of a shift in how they think about and process email.  And since these are people that live and die by their email systems, how change will affect them (and ultimately me) isn't something I could take lightly.

Anyway, I hope this helps.  I know that when I approach decisions about change like this it helps me to hear how someone else thought it through.

For what it is worth, if budget ever dictates I need to shave money from my IT budget, one of the first things I will do is move to Google Apps.

Claremont,

                      You are absolutely right, there are many people out there in the bread lines right now.  My apologies to everyone reading this if I appeared ungrateful.  Let me add a little context to this:

When I say I am not crazy about the work involved, I simply meant "unnecessary work".  Admittedly a move to google apps would mitigate much of the maintenance, at least it would appear to. This wasn't intended to be a rant against google apps, more of a request for information from anyone with experience with this sort of thing.

This organization is a non-profit.  As such I have radically reduced my rates and this sort of migration is cutting into time I have with "premium" clients.  I am happy to do the work most days, however this would place and up front demand on my time that I am not crazy about.  That, is obviously not an empirical reason for not migrating, but it is a point of clarification.

Another issue I had with google hosting is the limitations on the sites that can be hosted.  It appears that there are only a series of templates available at this point, and not much room for customized applications.

I am also looking for some pros and cons, or at least some input based on anecdotal experience, one way or the other.

As I stated in my initial post I am not quite sure what is involved with this sort of migration.  I realize that all of the dns will have to be pointed to the new host, but I am curious to know if pointing these at google will resolve my mailserver as well.

Will this require a modification of the mx records/a records? Or will those automatically resolve.  The interface for google apps is very user friendly but also (as often is the case) it is limited in functionality as a result.

Thank you again

I think Holdstrong is leading you in a great direction here.

I have not been tempted to go in the direction of Google Apps, so my practical experience is not at a level where I can debate it's merits and shortcomings. My intention with my posts here was to illustrate the fact that your presented arguments needed to be stronger!

I think most organizations are in a position to consider Google Apps at some point. If the org is on the ground floor and looking to implement a solution, that might be a natural move, but if the infrastructure is already in place within the org, transitioning to Google Apps from a working environment sounds downright painful to me. Never mind the tech issues. That is pretty straightforward. It is the "people" issues that are usually more substantial than people predict.

Changing your MX records and routing your emails through google is pretty straight forward and won't be that much work.  Google has some good step by step instructions to assist.

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33352

Is that what  you meant?

I agree with Holdstrong's evaluation. 

In my environment we use google apps for email hosting for one site, with a couple of alias domains attached,  We use a different service to host the web sites, and I manage the DNS though our registrar's site.

Are you planning to abandon exchange and Outlook as clients, or use outlook to IMAP or POP the Google Apps mail?

On the site I have using Google apps, the biggest complaint of the web access is the method that google uses to keep emails in a thread format, so you can have replies to emails buried deep into previous pages.

The other complaint is the IMAP some times doesn't sync well and email gets a little goofy but then clears up later.

I could not get traction with any users to start using the google docs collaboration potential, as "email net" (as opposed to sneaker net) was a more comfortable method to exchange information that the collaborative work place that google docs offer.

Additionally if your users want to continue to use Outlook calendar, I'm not aware that they can be synced and shared through google calendar, so you will loose that capability if you abandon exchange.

Lastly, take a long hard look at the Google terms of service and privacy policy, and make sure the cost of "free" aligns with your org's mission and privacy policy.

Dave

I also agree with Holdstrong here.  Another thing to consider is the possible integration with mobile phones.  Google has applications for many platforms that workwith Google Apps (Blackberry, iPhone, Java...) but it can be a real pain to get the java one to work if it doesn't come pre-installed on your phone.  Exchange 2003 with SP2 supports Windows Mobile, Palm OS and iPhone as they are.  Blackberry support is with an additional piece of software, but integrates very nicely.

I did migrate one of my clients to Google Apps, and they use it effectively, but they don't use Outlook.  Prior to that they were using Groupwise and moved away from the company that was providing them with Groupwise.  So they were going to have to change interfaces to operate anyway, and they were already using GMail.  Now they are operating well with Google Apps and their blackberries.  They are very small, though.

Thank  you everyone for your input. We successfully transferred our mailservice to google.

cyberfish,

I apologize for arriving late to the discussion, and my comments will probably be moot since you've already migrated your e-mail.  Your original request was for opinions on the pros and cons of using free, off-site apps (in general I assume, not just Google or e-mail specifically). Since no one really addressed the "cons", I'll attempt to do so now.

Well managed companies with skilled IT personnel do everything possible to safeguard and maintain full control over the company's private and valuable data. They never hand their data or related processes over to an outside operation over which they have little control and no legal recourse. It matters not if the service is free or has nifty features and a colorful icon. It simply isn't done. Period. End of discussion.

Now add the deplorable track record for most on-line apps, social networking and web 2.0 services in general* in maintaining anything even close to a secure, business-like environment, and the option of using free, off-site services becomes even less desirable.

Finally, factor in the cost of migrating back to in-house processes after the on-line service goes out of business (because they were free), starts charging high monthly rates (to avoid going out of business), or "evolves" their services in a way that conflicts with your organization's needs.   ( And consider the very real possibility that there might not BE a way of migrating back.)

So, having said that, why do so many NPO's think on-line apps are a great way to go, other than the obvious free buy-in? I'm no psychologist but the following comes to mind.

First, many NPO's are not particularly well managed.

Second, most of the smaller ones have no experienced IT people nearby to point out the above-listed risks and disadvantages.

Third, and far more subtle, is that many people of all ages and organizational positions are relative newcomers to computers, networking and the Internet (let's say... less than 10 years.)  Their experience is exclusively at the consumer level and they have no idea how serious networks are run. They honestly believe that a product is designed primarily for business use if it has the words "office", "pro", or "business" in its name. And they think it normal, acceptable and maybe even standard business practice to invite others to social sites that are crawling with malicious software, or to send e-mails with third party advertising at the bottom.

Finally, and I confess that I have trouble understanding this one, many NPO's treat their data as if it has no value at all.  Formal, secure backup strategies are non-existent. Yet employees, volunteers and just about anyone else who gets into the building is welcome to copy private documents or database information onto a USB flash drive and share it with whomever they wish.  From that perspective, I suppose it's perfectly acceptable to allow Google or anyone else to dig around in your e-mail, documents, spreadsheets and whatnot. But it's no way to run a business.

 Hope that helps. 

-ENO

*Yeah, I'm probably going to get flamed over that one.  But if you'd like me to post all the gmail outages, twitter Trojans, facebook privacy violations, myspace screw-ups and related web 2.0 problems of the last year or so, I think I have a list around here somewhere.

cheap, good, or fast (pick any two)

Google Apps = cheap and fast (not always so good regarding uptime or privacy department, depending on the type of work your company does)

MTAs you build / babysit = sometimes good (if you have the talent), sometimes cheap (depending on vendor), sometimes fast (depending on vendor)

I've gone both routes for companies of all sizes.  For my personal stuff, I use Google Apps. For businesses with no budget or in house expertise, Google Apps is decent and does a great job.  Larger established companies probably shouldn't seriously consider Google Apps, as they will have more specialized messaging requirements.

Universities are a toss up, depending on their budget or in-house expertise.

So are you still working there?  How have things progressed in the past few months?

I have been looking for some IT solutions for an organization that is just starting up, and we have considered heavily the potential for google apps.  Unfortunately, at this early stage (or organization just elected a board and is still waiting for our 501c3 paperwork to come through) we do not have the expertise to answer all the questions I have without some serious help.